Los minutos negros / The Black Minutes

About Los minutos negros / The Black Minutes

“Un maravilloso y sobrecogedor debut… es una obra maestra disfrazada de novela policíaca y nada que haya leído este año se le compara”. —Junot Díaz

De Martín Solares, ganador del Premio de Ensayo Literario José Revueltas 2016.

Los minutos negros será próximamente adaptada a su versión cinematográfica, protagonizada por Diego Luna y Demián Bichir.

Un despistado policía investiga un crimen en Paracuán, Tamaulipas, con creciente pasmo. ¿Será aquel asesino de niñas, de los setenta? ¿El narco? ¿La sanguinaria policía secreta? Entre un ex policía de humor negrísimo y un jesuita devoto al vodka y la farsa, el detective descubrirá que la vida en esta ciudad es una oscura sinfonía donde todos sus integrantes tienen deudas con la ley.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

“Breathless, marvelous… Latin American fiction at its pulpy, phantasmagorical finest… A literary masterpiece masquerading as a police procedural.” —Junot Diaz
 
When a young journalist named Bernardo Blanco is killed in the fictional Mexican port city of Paracuán, investigation into his murder reveals missing links in a disturbing multiple homicide case from twenty years earlier. As police officer Ramón “el Macetón” Cabrera discovers, Blanco had been writing a book about a 1970s case dealing with the murder of several young schoolgirls in Paracuán by a man known as El Chaneque. Cabrera realizes that whoever killed Blanco wanted to keep the truth about El Chaneque from being revealed, and he becomes determined to discover that truth.
 
The Black Minutes chronicles both Cabrera’s investigation into Blanco’s murder and goes back in time to follow detective Vicente Rangel’s investigation of the original El Chaneque case. Both narratives expose worlds of corruption, from cops who are content to close the door on a case without true justice to powerful politicians who can pay their way out of their families’ crimes. Full of dark twists and turns, and populated by a cast of captivating—and mostly corrupt—characters, The Black Minutes is an electrifying novel from a brilliant new voice.
 
“Mr. Solares is a graceful, even poetic, writer, especially in his hard-boiled dialogue and his descriptions of the wildly varied landscapes and ethnic types of northern Mexico.” —Larry Rohter, The New York